21 Quotes That Show The Radical Power Of Love

For HuffPost’s #LoveTakesAction series, we’re telling stories of how people are standing up to hate and supporting those most threatened. What will you stand up for? Tell us with #LoveTakesAction.

Love has the power to create bonds, forge community, ignite a spark that galvanizes people into action. Writers, activists and thought leaders have long used words to light that spark. Through prose and speeches and essays, history and her chronologers have taught us that love is a force to be reckoned with.

To honor the radical power of love this Valentine’s Day, The Huffington Post rounded up 21 of our favorite quotes about love to remind us that where there is love there is hope.

1. “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

6. “I swear I couldn’t love you more than I do right now, and yet I know I will tomorrow.”

7. “Take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic.”

8. “Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

14. “All religious institutions, despite different philosophical views, all have the same message ― a message of love.”

15. “We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.”

16. “Her love was full-throated and all-encompassing and unadorned. Every day she blew through her entire reserve.”

17. “We know what the world wants from us. We know we must decide whether to stay small, quiet, and uncomplicated or allow ourselves to grow as big, loud, and complex as we were made to be. Every girl must decide whether to be true to herself or true to the world. Every girl must decide whether to settle for adoration or fight for love.”